Explore the Frontier of Global Academia

01.

Nature (Science) 2026-06-17 DOI: HASH:5febef05634a42367777765f76a40772

How the zebrafish brain weaves recent experiences into future decisions

Authors: Unknown Author

Animals often use recent experience to guide future choices. Whole-brain imaging in larval zebrafish (Danio rerio) reveals a dedicated neural circuit that governs history-biased decisions: the thalamus maintains the most recent event as a stable pattern of neuronal activity, and the brainstem integrates recent experiences into a continuous signal that biases future action. Whole-brain calcium imaging in the zebrafish reveals how information about events in the recent past drives future behaviour.

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02.

bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-14 DOI: HASH:1439b28771f7a6e2f07dda9eea8261a0

Cellfm-datasets: A Unified Data Infrastructure for Single-Cell and Spatial Transcriptomics Foundation Model Pretraining

Authors:

Zhang↗Pang↗Yan↗Tang↗Deng↗He↗

Large-scale cell foundation models are increasingly limited not only by model architecture, but also by the data infrastructure required to repeatedly sample sparse transcriptomic profiles from out-of-core cohorts. AnnData/H5AD has become a standard exchange format for single-cell and spatial omics analysis, yet its HDF5-backed layout is not designed for high-frequency random mini-batch loading under multi-worker and distributed pretraining. We present Cellfm-datasets, a data infrastructure artifact that converts H5AD cohorts into a self-describing compressed sparse row (CSR) memmap layout and exposes the resulting corpus through Hugging Face Dataset and IterableDataset interfaces. The artifact stores a shared gene vocabulary, per-sample metadata, optional spatial coordinates, observation metadata, manifests, and checksums, and reconstructs sparse cell or group records at runtime without dense expansion. A unified sampling abstraction supports random-cell groups, manifest-defined biological regions, and coordinate-based spatial blocks, with deterministic sharding across distributed ranks and data-loader workers. Spatial demonstrations on P14 mouse brain transcriptomics sections illustrate region- and block-level sampling over real anatomical structures. In controlled benchmarks on a public heterogeneous ModelScope scRNA-seq subset, Cellfm-datasets reached 60,571 +/- 1,734 samples/s in single-core random loading, scaled to approximately 160,000 samples/s with eight workers, and maintained near-constant process-private memory while reading up to one million cells. By moving sparse single-cell and spatial corpora from model-specific loader code into reusable, validated, and framework-native dataset artifacts, this design may reduce the engineering burden of reproducible cell foundation model pretraining and make repeated training runs, model comparisons, and mixed-modality data reuse easier to standardize.

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03.

arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-11 DOI: arXiv:2606.12346

Atlas H&E-TME: Scalable AI-Based Tissue Profiling at Expert Pathologist-Level Accuracy

Authors:

Kai Standvoss↗Miriam H\"agele↗Rosemarie Krupar↗Julika Ribbat-Idel↗Jennifer Altsch\"uler↗Gerrit Erdmann↗Hans Pinckaers↗Evelyn Ramberger↗Madleen Drinkwitz↗\'Ad\'am N\'arai↗Alexander M\"ollers↗Katja Lingelbach↗…

Hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining is the cornerstone of histopathology, yet scalable, quantitative analysis of H&E whole-slide images (WSIs) remains a central challenge in computational pathology. We present Atlas H&E-TME, an AI-based system built on the Atlas family of pathology foundation models that predicts tissue quality, tissue region, and cell type labels across multiple cancer types, yielding over 4,500 quantitative readouts per slide at cell-level resolution. A key challenge to validating such systems is overcoming morphological ambiguity inherent to H&E-only ground truth and the limited scalability of more informed references drawing on modalities such as immunohistochemistry (IHC). We address this with a dual validation framework combining biologically grounded depth with technical and morphological breadth. For depth, we propose an IHC-informed multi-pathologist consensus protocol that substantially improves inter-rater agreement over conventional H&E-only annotation. This yields a molecularly grounded reference against which we compare Atlas H&E-TME and pathologists working from H&E alone. For breadth, we benchmark Atlas H&E-TME on over 200,000 high-confidence H&E-only pathologist annotations across 1,500+ cases spanning eight cancer types and their most common metastatic sites, with subtypes covering >90% of clinical cases per cancer type, drawn from 25+ sources and 8+ scanner models. Benchmarked against the IHC-informed consensus, Atlas H&E-TME matches or exceeds pathologist H&E-only performance and generalizes consistently and robustly across this broad morphological and technical scope. In doing so, Atlas H&E-TME turns the H&E slide – the most ubiquitous data in pathology – into a scalable, quantitative window into the tumor and its microenvironment, laying a foundation for the next generation of tissue-based biomarkers in translational and clinical research.

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04.

arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-17 DOI: arXiv:2606.17359

Canonical regularization of the stationary Coulomb problem and an Aufbau-like spectral ordering

Authors:

Anand Aruna Kumar↗

arXiv:2606.17359v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The stationary hydrogen atom has Coulomb degeneracy across orbital levels, whereas the Aufbau/Madelung ordering is an empirical, many-electron rule established in atomic physics. We examine the hydrogen atom through a regularized de Broglie–Bohm representation, in which stationary amplitude current constraints generate separable Sturm–Liouville branches. In this formulation, the radial, orbital, and magnetic sectors acquire canonical Langer-like inverse square corrections. The modified boundary value problems allow analytical solutions and produce a hydrogen-like spectrum with regularized radial and angular indices. Consequently, radial Coulomb quantization acquires an orbital dependent shift, lifting the Coulomb degeneracy and producing a spectral ordering that follows the Aufbau/Madelung sequence. On this basis, we construct the ordering of the regularized de Broglie–Bohm states and show that the spectral structure retains the standard degenerate Rydberg sequence in the l=0 sector. The separated amplitudes are represented by generalized special function branches, including the associated Laguerre, Legendre, and Bessel functions with non-integral parameters arising from regularized separation. Therefore, the treatment is intended as an analytical examination of spectral ordering in a regularized one center Coulomb problem rather than as a replacement for the many electron atomic structure theory. Keywords: de Broglie–Bohm representation; Coulomb spectrum; canonical regularization; Langer correction; Sturm–Liouville equations; Aufbau principle; Madelung ordering; associated Legendre functions; associated Laguerre functions; Bessel functions.

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05.

medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-15 DOI: HASH:84c0015950bd8d7e9749e9fe901b893e

ECHOCARDIOGRAPHY ABNORMALITIES IN PREECLAMPSIA WITH SEVERE FEATURES.

Authors:

Rathod↗A. T↗Sarojini↗PC↗S. R↗Deshmukh↗Fathima↗S. A↗

Purpose To determine the frequency of echocardiographic abnormalities in women with preeclampsia with severe features. To describe the spectrum and types of echocardiographic abnormalities associated with preeclampsia with severe features. Method This is a Prospective observational study conducted in Vani Vilas hospital attached to Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute, Bangalore from January 2023 to December 2025. 560 pregnant women diagnosed with severe preeclampsia(SPE) were included in the study. Chronic hypertension without superimposed preeclampsia, underlying cardiac diseases and previous history of peripartum cardiomyopathy were excluded from the study. Transthoracic echocardiography-TTE (2D ECHO) was done to evaluate cardiac structure and function. Echocardiographic abnormalities identified during the study were documented and analysed using descriptive statistical methods. Results Abnormalities in ECHO was noted in 23.03%. A unique finding was the documentation of elevated pulmonary artery systolic pressures (PASP) suggestive of Pulmonary Hypertension (PH) (PASP >35 mm HG) among 20.25% of the participants. It was also the commonest abnormality on ECHO. Mild PH was the commonest (15.71%), moderate PH was seen in 3.92% and severe PH in 0.71% of cases. Next most frequent abnormality was moderate to severe valvular regurgitation (10%), followed by left ventricular hypertrophy (5.53%). Diastolic dysfunction (DD) was seen in 3.92%, systolic dysfunction(SD) in 3.57%, chamber dilatation in 3.57% and LV global hypokinesia in 3.03% cases of SPE Conclusion Preeclampsia with severe features (SPE) is associated with 23.03% abnormalities on echocardiography. SPE is associated with systolic dysfunction, diastolic dysfunction, chamber dilatation, valvular regurgitation, left ventricular hypertrophy and pulmonary hypertension.

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06.

arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-17 DOI: arXiv:2606.17249

From Compression to Deployment: Real-Time and Energy-Efficient FastGRNN on Ultra-Constrained Microcontrollers

Authors:

Emre Can Kizilates↗

arXiv:2606.17249v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The dominant trajectory of modern machine learning has been to scale up: larger models, larger accelerators, larger memory budgets. Yet a multi-year global semiconductor supply constraint and the growing energy and carbon cost of always-online inference expose the fragility of this trajectory and motivate the opposite direction: refactoring AI and ML algorithms to fit the small, ubiquitous microcontrollers already in mass production in wearables, sensors, and edge appliances. We present an end-to-end open-source reproduction of FastGRNN, a compact gated recurrent cell, deployed on two bare-metal targets: the 8-bit Arduino (ATmega328P) and the 16-bit MSP430 (no hardware multiplier; 16 KB Flash; 512 B SRAM). Our compression pipeline combines low-rank weight factorization, iterative hard-thresholding sparsity, and per-tensor Q15 post-training quantization with explicit activation calibration. The deployed model occupies 566 bytes of weights and achieves macro F1 = 0.918 (seed 0; five-seed Q15 mean 0.853+-0.107) on the HAPT test set. It matches a PyTorch reference at 100% prediction agreement across 3,399 test windows (MCU seed 0; 99.91-100% C-equivalent across five seeds). Both platforms sustain real-time 50 Hz streaming inference (9.21 ms per sample on Arduino; 13 ms on MSP430), where a 256-entry sigmoid/tanh look-up table delivers a 30.5x speedup on the multiplier-less MSP430. Four contributions extend the original FastGRNN paper: (i) cross-platform bit-equivalent deterministic inference; (ii) characterization of recurrent warm-up latency (median 74 samples, 1.48 s; worst-case 125 samples, 2.50 s over 100 test windows); (iii) a deployable look-up-table recipe for multiplier-less embedded targets; and (iv) hardware energy characterization showing 17.7 mW active inference power,

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07.

arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-11 DOI: arXiv:2509.23982

Toward Preference-aligned Large Language Models via Residual-based Model Steering

Authors:

Lucio La Cava↗Andrea Tagarelli↗

Preference alignment is a critical step in making Large Language Models (LLMs) useful and aligned with (human) preferences. Existing approaches such as Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback or Direct Preference Optimization typically require curated data and expensive optimization over billions of parameters, and eventually lead to persistent task-specific models. In this work, we introduce Preference alignment of Large Language Models via Residual Steering (PaLRS), a training-free method that exploits preference signals encoded in the residual streams of LLMs. From as few as one hundred preference pairs, PaLRS extracts lightweight, plug-and-play steering vectors that can be applied at inference time to push models toward preferred behaviors. We evaluate PaLRS on various small-to-medium-scale open-source LLMs, showing that PaLRS-aligned models achieve consistent gains on mathematical reasoning and code generation benchmarks while preserving baseline general-purpose performance. Moreover, when compared to models aligned with DPO and SimPO, they perform better with great time-savings. Our findings highlight that PaLRS offers an effective, much more efficient and flexible alternative to standard preference optimization pipelines, offering a training-free, plug-and-play mechanism for alignment with minimal data.

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08.

arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-12 DOI: arXiv:2605.17770

Entropy-Gradient Inversion: Moving Toward Internal Mechanism of Large Reasoning Models

Authors:

Junyao Yang↗Chen Qian↗Kun Wang↗Linfeng Zhang↗Quanshi Zhang↗Yong Liu↗Dongrui Liu↗

The advancement of Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) has catalyzed a paradigm shift from reactive ``fast thinking'' text generation to systematic, step-by-step ``slow thinking'' reasoning, unlocking state-of-the-art performance in complex mathematical and logical tasks. However, the field faces the fundamental gap between token-level behavioral analysis and internal reasoning mechanisms, and the instability of reinforcement learning (RL) for reasoning optimization relying on costly external verifiers. We identify and formally define Entropy-Gradient Inversion, a robust negative correlation between token entropy and logit gradients that acts as a definitive geometric fingerprint for LRM reasoning capability. Building on this, we propose Correlation-Regularized Group Policy Optimization (CorR-PO), which embeds this inversion signature into RL reward regularization. Extensive experiments on various reasoning benchmarks across multiple model scales show CorR-PO consistently outperforms state-of-the-art baselines, confirming that stronger inversion directly correlates with superior reasoning performance.

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09.

arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-25 DOI: arXiv:2303.17429

Haagerup property and group-invariant percolation

Authors:

Chiranjib Mukherjee↗Konstantin Recke↗

arXiv:2303.17429v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Let $\mathcal G$ be the Cayley graph of a finitely generated, infinite group $\Gamma$. We show that $\Gamma$ has the Haagerup property if and only if for every $\alpha\alpha\mathrm{deg}_{\mathcal G}(g)$ for every vertex $g$ and with the two-point function $\tau(g,h)=\mathbb P\big[g\leftrightarrow h\big]$ vanishing as $d(g,h)\to\infty$. On the other hand, we show that $\Gamma$ has Kazhdan's property (T) if and only if there exists a threshold $\alpha^*\alpha^*\mathrm{deg}(o)$ implies that the two-point function is uniformly bounded away from zero. These results in particular answer questions raised by Lyons (J. Math. Phys. 41. 1099-1126 (2000)) about characterizations of properties of groups beyond amenability through group-invariant percolations. The method of proof is new and is based on a construction of percolations with suitable dependence structures built from invariant point processes on spaces with measured walls. This construction furthermore leads to quantitative bounds on the two-point functions, exhibiting in particular exponential decay of the two-point function in several prominent examples of Haagerup groups, including co-compact Fuchsian groups, co-compact discrete subgroups of $\mathrm{Isom}(\mathbb H^n)$ and lamplighters over free groups. This method also allows us to extend the aforementioned characterization of property (T) to the setting of relative property (T) and provide an application to Bernoulli percolation at the uniqueness threshold.

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10.

arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-11 DOI: arXiv:2603.08558

Impact of Connectivity on Laplacian Representations in Reinforcement Learning

Authors:

Tommaso Giorgi↗Pierriccardo Olivieri↗Keyue Jiang↗Laura Toni↗Matteo Papini↗

arXiv:2603.08558v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Learning compact state representations in Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) has proven crucial for addressing the curse of dimensionality in large-scale reinforcement learning (RL) problems. Existing principled approaches leverage structural priors on the MDP by constructing state representations as linear combinations of the state-graph Laplacian eigenvectors. When the transition graph is unknown or the state space is prohibitively large, the graph spectral features can be estimated directly via sample trajectories. In this work, we prove an upper bound on the approximation error of linear value function approximation under the learned spectral features. We show how this error scales with the algebraic connectivity of the state-graph, grounding the approximation quality in the topological structure of the MDP. We further bound the error introduced by the eigenvector estimation itself, leading to an end-to-end error decomposition across the representation learning pipeline. Additionally, our expression of the Laplacian operator for the RL setting, although equivalent to existing ones, prevents some common misunderstandings, of which we show some examples from the literature. Our results hold for general (non-uniform) policies without any assumptions on the symmetry of the induced transition kernel. We validate our theoretical findings with numerical simulations on gridworld environments.

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11.

medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-24 DOI: HASH:5f377a7373e1c199d6ff25a0103f7a88

Structural variant discovery and diagnostic impact in rare diseases from short-read and long-read sequencing

Authors:

Sanchis-Juan↗Mostovoy↗Stenton↗S. L↗Ganesh↗V. S↗Weisburd↗Yenkin↗Kurtas↗N. E↗Zhao↗Shin↗…

Rare diseases collectively affect 1 in 10 individuals, yet current genetic testing fails to identify a causal variant for most cases. At present, cytogenetic methods and/or sequencing approaches such as exome (ES) or short-read genome sequencing (srGS) represent the state-of-the-art for comprehensive clinical discovery of sequence and structural variants (SVs), including copy number variants, balanced SVs, complex SVs, and tandem repeats (TRs). Recently, long-read genome sequencing (lrGS), coupled with multiomics data, has presented great promise to resolve variation in genomic regions recalcitrant to characterization by srGS such as highly repetitive simple repeat sequences and segmental duplications. However, there are few guidelines to enable clinical interpretation of genetic variation in these highly repetitive genomic regions, and the enthusiasm of the field in adopting lrGS has made it difficult to assess the true added diagnostic yield of this technology due to widely variable and inconsistently applied analytic pipelines and variable degrees of pre-screening by ES or srGS. Here, we investigated the contribution of SVs to rare diseases using srGS as a front-line strategy when paired with highly sensitive SV discovery and evaluate the added diagnostic yield of incorporating lrGS for a subset of cases. Our srGS analysis encompassed 1,462 families (3,450 individuals) recruited through the Broad Institute Center for Mendelian Genetics and the Genomics Research to Elucidate the Genetics of Rare Diseases (GREGoR) programs. Diagnostic SVs were identified in 5.4% of cases (79/1,462), of which 80% were uniquely detectable by srGS compared to standard cytogenetic techniques. For 96 families (including 10 families with a heterozygous variant observed in a known recessive gene of clinical relevance), we performed lrGS with methylation profiling, as well as long-read transcriptomic analyses in a subset of 20 trios. Analyses with lrGS yielded over 25,000 SVs per genome, 63% of which were not captured by srGS, along with an additional ~200 rare SNV/indels per genome not previously captured and 12 differentially methylated regions per genome. Among these, we identified only one diagnostic variant not interpreted by srGS, an apparently mosaic de novo SNV in CASK that was absent in the srGS callset due to allelic imbalance. No new diagnoses were supported by long-read transcriptomics or episignatures. In this well characterized rare disease cohort, the added diagnostic yield was thus 1.04% (1/96 families). Following a systematic literature review of prior lrGS studies, we find that most reported diagnoses were detectable by srGS and that our added diagnostic yield is consistent with those prior studies. These studies emphasize the significant impact of comprehensive SV discovery in rare disease cases and further demonstrate the power for increased discovery of novel genomic variation and episignatures from lrGS. Nonetheless, they also serve to temper expectations of dramatic diagnostic advances in rare disease patients until there is more extensive annotation of the functional and clinical impact of all coding and noncoding variation uniquely accessible to lrGS with extensive reference databases spanning highly repetitive genomic sequencing that could be enabled by this transformative technology.

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12.

arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-18 DOI: arXiv:2606.18886

DINO-Med3D: Bridging Dimension and Domain Gaps in Volumetric Segmentation via Progressive Adaptation

Authors:

Haoyu Hu↗Xiyao Ma↗Shiqi Liu↗Linsen Zhang↗Xiaoliang Xie↗Xiaohu Zhou↗Zeng-Guang Hou↗

Although DINOv3 has demonstrated remarkable semantic discrimination in natural imagery, its direct application to volumetric medical segmentation is hindered by inherent dimension and domain disparities. To resolve these issues, we propose DINO-Med3D, a two-stage progressive framework that repurpose the pre-trained DINOv3 encoder for 3D medical tasks. In the first stage, we mitigate the dimension gap by introducing a multi-slice embedding module that incorporates pseudo-3D context, while simultaneously employing a segmentation proxy task to adapt representations learned from natural scenes to the medical domain. Subsequently, we further enhance volumetric understanding by adding lightweight 3D adapters into the frozen backbone to enforce global inter-slice continuity. Finally, to compensate for the spatial information loss inherent in the embedding process, we design a parallel detail recovery stream to explicitly preserve high-frequency boundary cues. Extensive experiments on five public datasets demonstrate that our approach successfully adapts DINOv3 to the medical domain and significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines.

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13.

arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-12 DOI: arXiv:2606.13026

Democracy in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

Authors:

Evangelos Pournaras↗Srijoni Majumdar↗Carina Hausladen↗Dirk Helbing↗

arXiv:2606.13026v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Interfacing Artificial Intelligence (AI) with democracy is one of the most profound challenges of our times. On the one hand, AI comes with opportunities to overcome long-standing challenges in democracy, such as low participation in deliberative and voting processes with poor representation of people. On the other hand, new risks arise from AI algorithms that are privacy-intrusive, biased, manipulative, spread misinformation and influence election results. Moving beyond the over-simplistic question of whether AI is good or bad for democracy, the Handbook on Democracy in the Era of Artificial Intelligence asks instead: how to upgrade democracies and the principles they are built on, using AI? How to engage with AI and on what terms? Which new values and design principles are required to build democratic resilience? In 34 chapters by 59 authors across the world from different disciplines, we explore how AI can empower collective intelligence for democracy (Part 1) and what is the future of deliberative democracy using large language models and social media (Part 2). We also illustrate the role of AI for building resilient self-governance systems (Part 3) and the challenges of transforming democracy in the age of AI (Part 4). We conclude with broader perspectives (Part 5) that re-imagine the interplay of democracy and AI.

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14.

arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-17 DOI: arXiv:2606.17907

SPICE-Q and Large-Scale Quantum Chip Production

Authors:

Cai↗Ling Qiao↗Bin Yang↗Fumin Luo↗Chang Liu↗WeiGui Guo↗GuoRong Zhang↗XueFei Liu↗Qinglang Guo↗Bin Wu↗

arXiv:2606.17907v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We propose SPICE-Q, a SPICE-inspired design-technology co-optimization framework for superconducting quantum processors. Rather than replacing tools such as HFSS, Qiskit Metal, pyEPR, SQcircuit, SQuADDS, scqubits, or QuTiP, SPICE-Q aims to connect them through a unified, traceable data chain spanning process rules, layout, electromagnetic simulation, energy-participation-ratio and circuit quantization, Hamiltonian extraction, noise analysis, cryogenic test, and manufacturing feedback. The central mapping is from process and PDK constraints to layout geometry, electromagnetic modes, equivalent circuit parameters, effective Hamiltonians, and finally metrics such as frequency, coupling, anharmonicity, decoherence, readout performance, and yield. This flow must capture Josephson-junction variability, transmon frequency allocation, resonator and Purcell constraints, coupler crosstalk, microwave routing, 3D interconnects, material/interface loss, package modes, and wafer-scale process statistics. By introducing standardized model interfaces, statistical parameter models, model cards, version governance, and closed-loop calibration from cryogenic and fabrication data, SPICE-Q frames superconducting quantum-chip design as an engineering workflow rather than a collection of isolated simulations. We argue that scalable and fault-tolerant quantum processors will require such a continuous model chain from device physics and electromagnetic fields to quantum dynamics, noise, manufacturability, and system-level yield.

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15.

Nature (Science) 2026-06-18 DOI: HASH:cd5eb0f40a65e62d40c51275a332fd8c

Daily briefing: The proteins that protect us from deadly mutations

Authors:

Flora Graham↗

Proteins that ‘buffer’ the effects of mutations could help to treat diseases such as cancers. Plus, goats can follow human voices and the battle over a key ocean observatory project in the United States. Proteins that ‘buffer’ the effects of mutations could help to treat diseases such as cancers. Plus, goats can follow human voices and the battle over a key ocean observatory project in the United States.

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16.

arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16 DOI: arXiv:2606.16392

Towards UAV Image Dehazing: A UAV Atmospheric Scattering Model, Benchmark, and Geometry-Aware Deep Unfolding Network

Authors:

Wenxuan Fang↗Jiangwei Weng↗Yu Zheng↗Junkai Fan↗Guangfa Wang↗Xiang Chen↗Jian Yang↗Jun Li↗

In UAV applications, haze significantly obscures distant details and weaken structural information, hindering the recovery of details. Current UAV scenarios still face two key challenges: (i) paired hazy/clean images from the real world are unobtainable, while the classical atmospheric scattering model is inadequate for modeling the spatially non-uniform haze in UAV imagery; (ii) existing dehazing methods struggle to remove the heavy haze accumulated in the upper regions of UAV images. To address these issues, we first propose a UAV Atmospheric Scattering Model (UASM), which explicitly incorporates flight altitude, viewing pitch, and extinction to characterize the non-uniform haze distribution in UAV imaging. Based on UASM, we develop a physics-driven dehazing framework, termed Geometry-aware Proximal Deep Unfolding Network (GP-DUN). Specifically, GP-DUN consists of three key modules: a Latent Geometry Estimator (LGE) that infers transmittance consistent with UAV imaging geometry, a Geometry-aware Gradient Descent Module (GeoGDM) that embeds UASM into the data-fidelity term and performs physics-consistent closed-form updates, and an Pooling-Expert Proximal Mapping Module (PE-PMM) that learns an implicit prior to restore textures and structures beyond the capability of explicit physical modeling. In addition, we further construct UASM-HazeSet, which provides controllable paired synthetic data together with 2,285 real UAV haze images for testing. Extensive experiments show that GP-DUN consistently outperforms existing methods on both UASM-HazeSet and real UAV haze benchmarks.

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17.

arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-17 DOI: arXiv:2601.01762

AlignDrive: Aligned Lateral-Longitudinal Planning for End-to-End Autonomous Driving

Authors:

Yanhao Wu↗Haoyang Zhang↗Fei He↗Rui Wu↗Yanhu Shan↗Congpei Qiu↗Liang Gao↗Wei Ke↗Tong Zhang↗

Practical autonomous driving requires models that generalize by reasoning through spatial-temporal possibilities to exclude unsafe outcomes. While state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods use parallel planning architectures, they fail to explicitly couple speed decisions with agent behavior along the driving path, leading to suboptimal coordination. To address this, we propose a cascaded framework that transforms longitudinal planning from an independent prediction task into a path-conditioned reasoning process. On the model side, we introduce an anchor-based regression design that conditions longitudinal prediction on the lateral drive path, and reformulate longitudinal planning as 1D displacement prediction along the path. This reduces geometric uncertainty and sharpens the model's focus on interaction-driven dynamics. On the data side, we introduce a planning-oriented data augmentation strategy that simulates rare safety-critical events by programmatically inserting agents and relabeling longitudinal targets to enforce collision avoidance. Evaluated on the challenging Bench2Drive benchmark, our method achieves SOTA performance with a driving score of 89.07 and a success rate of 73.18%, demonstrating significantly improved coordination and safety. Further evaluation on Fail2Drive confirms strong generalization to rare edge cases where parallel formulations typically fail. Project page:https://yanhaowu.github.io/AlignDrive/.

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18.

arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16 DOI: arXiv:2604.13301

Honeypot Protocol

Authors:

Najmul Hasan↗

arXiv:2604.13301v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Trusted monitoring, the standard defense in AI control, is vulnerable to adaptive attacks, collusion, and strategic attack selection. All of these exploit the fact that monitoring is passive: it observes model behavior but never probes whether the model would behave differently under different perceived conditions. We introduce the honeypot protocol, which tests for context-dependent behavior by varying only the system prompt across three conditions (evaluation, synthetic deployment, explicit no-monitoring) while holding the task, environment, and scoring identical. We evaluate Claude Opus 4.6 in BashArena across all three conditions in both honest and attack modes. The model achieved 100% main task success and triggered zero side tasks uniformly across conditions, providing a baseline for future comparisons with stronger attack policies and additional models.

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19.

medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-15 DOI: HASH:f8d0c6985f19f9da44f919de87373ece

International Consensus Guideline on Management of Genitourinary Adverse Events Associated with Prostate Cancer Radiotherapy

Authors:

Dornisch↗A. M↗Alongi↗Ballas↗Birtle↗Blanchard↗Bryant↗R. J↗Choudhury↗Cooperberg↗M. R↗Dal Pra↗…

Purpose/Objective: Genitourinary (GU) adverse events (AEs) are common during and after pelvic radiation therapy (RT) for prostate cancer and can substantially impact quality of life. We convened an international committee to establish consensus in the prevention, mitigation, and management of radiation-related acute and late GU AEs, as there are no relevant evidence-based consensus guidelines to inform treating providers. Materials/Methods: A systematic evidence review focused on mitigation and management of radiation-related acute and late GU AEs was performed in PubMed, Embase and Cochrane. The following topics were addressed: management of acute GU AEs in the intact and post-operative settings; RT techniques; bladder outlet obstruction procedures; and indications for urology referral or hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBO). Evidence-based consensus recommendations were developed using a Delphi process. We highlight the current state of evidence and evidence gaps worthy of future study. Results: Consensus was reached for 31 key questions. For management of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS), most evidence comes from trials in patients without cancer and not undergoing RT. A consensus algorithm for medical management of acute GU AEs was developed with the following highlights: (a) alpha blockers as 1st-line for obstructive symptoms in the intact setting, (b) anti-spasmodics as 1st -line for irritative symptoms in the intact setting, and (c) anti-spasmodics as 1st -line in the post-operative setting. The consensus algorithm provides an ordered list of medications to offer if 1st -line options afford inadequate relief. For RT fractionation, randomized clinical trial (RCT) data are available. 40% of panelists rarely or never use standard fractionation over moderate hypofractionation for patients with baseline LUTS, but most consider moderate hypofractionation over SBRT for AUA IPSS > 15. For patients with severe obstructive LUTS (most commonly AUA IPSS >20), the panel recommends a prophylactic bladder outlet obstruction procedure and, if obstructive symptoms improve, consideration of moderate hypofractionation or SBRT, based on retrospective data. There is one RCT supporting use of HBO for late radiation cystitis. Conclusions: The consensus guideline synthesizes available evidence and expert opinion across key clinical decision points to provide practical guidance in the prevention, mitigation, and management of radiation-related acute and late GU AEs in prostate cancer RT. Envisioned as a living document with periodic updates, this guideline serves as a resource for practicing radiation oncologists by outlining expert-derived consensus recommendations of evidence-based care in areas where high-quality data is limited.

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20.

arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16 DOI: arXiv:2510.08129

Adaptively secure unitary designs with constant non-Clifford cost

Authors:

Lennart Bittel↗Lorenzo Leone↗

arXiv:2510.08129v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Randomness is a fundamental resource in quantum information, with crucial applications in cryptography, algorithms, and error correction. A central challenge is to construct unitary $k$-designs that closely approximate Haar-random unitaries while minimizing the costly use of non-Clifford operations. In this work, we present a protocol able to generate unitary $k$-designs on $n$ qubits, secure against any adversarial quantum measurement, with a system-size-independent number of non-Clifford gates. Our construction applies a $k$-design only to a subsystem of size $\Theta(k)$, independent of $n$. This ``seed'' design is then ``diluted'' across the entire $n$-qubit system by sandwiching it between two random Clifford operators. The resulting ensemble forms an $\varepsilon$-approximate unitary $k$-design on $n$ qubits. We prove that this construction achieves full quantum security against adaptive adversaries using only $\tilde{O}(k^2 \log\varepsilon^{-1})$ non-Clifford gates. If one requires security only against polynomial-time adaptive adversaries, the non-Clifford cost decreases to $\tilde{O}(k + \log^{1+c} \varepsilon^{-1})$. This is optimal, since we show that at least $\Omega(k)$ non-Clifford gates are required in this setting. Compared to existing approaches, our method significantly reduces non-Clifford overhead while strengthening security guarantees to adaptive security as well as removing artificial assumptions between $n$ and $k$. These results make high-order unitary designs practically attainable in near-term fault-tolerant quantum architectures.

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21.

arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-24 DOI: arXiv:2606.24775

Are We Ready For An Agent-Native Memory System?

Authors:

Wei Zhou↗Xuanhe Zhou↗Shaokun Han↗Hongming Xu↗Guoliang Li↗Zhiyu Li↗Feiyu Xiong↗Fan Wu↗

Memory for large language model (LLM) agents has rapidly evolved from simple retrieval-augmented mechanisms into a data management system that supports persistent information storage, retrieval, update, consolidation, and dynamic lifecycle governance throughout agent execution. Despite this evolution, existing evaluations still benchmark agent memory mainly through end-to-end task success metrics (e.g., F1, BLEU), while treating the underlying system as a monolithic black box. As a result, critical system-level concerns, including operational costs, architectural trade-offs across memory modules, and robustness under dynamic knowledge updates, remain insufficiently explored. In this paper, we present a systematic experimental study of agent memory from a data management perspective. We propose an analytical framework that decomposes agent memory into four core modules: memory representation and storage, extraction, retrieval and routing, and maintenance. Under this framework, we evaluate 12 representative memory systems and two reference baselines across five benchmark workloads spanning 11 datasets. Our extensive end-to-end evaluation shows that no single architecture dominates across all scenarios; instead, effectiveness depends heavily on how well the memory structure aligns with the workload bottleneck. Furthermore, through fine-grained ablation studies, we quantify their individual effects on representation fidelity, retrieval precision, update correctness, and long-horizon stability. Finally, we reveal cost-performance trade-offs under realistic workloads, showing localized maintenance is more cost-efficient than global reorganization. Based on these findings, we identify promising directions towards building truly agent-native memory systems. The code is publicly available at https://github.com/OpenDataBox/MemoryData.

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22.

arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16 DOI: arXiv:2606.16203

DynFS-MoE: Dynamic Functional-Structural Mixture-of-Experts for Post-Traumatic Epilepsy Diagnosis

Authors:

Jun-En Ding↗Spencer Chen↗Henry Noren↗Daniel Valdivia↗Christine Yohn↗Suhina Patel↗Taylor Zink↗Hai Sun↗Feng Liu↗

Post-traumatic epilepsy (PTE) is a severe complication of traumatic brain injury (TBI), yet early identification remains challenging due to the complex structural and functional alterations it induces in the brain. To address this, we propose a dynamic multimodal Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) framework that integrates functional and structural MRI through time-aware functional-structural encoding and class-conditioned expert routing. Within this framework, modality-specific and cross-modal experts learn complementary representations, while a Modality-Class MoE (MCoE) module dynamically dispatches expert weights according to each classification objective. Experimental results across three binary classification tasks demonstrate that the framework consistently outperforms static fusion baselines, and high-interpretability analyses further reveal meaningful region-of-interest (ROI) interactions. This dynamic multimodal expert framework effectively captures class-dependent brain interaction patterns and provides an interpretable approach for PTE diagnosis and risk stratification.

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23.

arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-19 DOI: arXiv:2606.20100

WeGenBench: A Multidimensional Diagnostic Benchmark towards Text-to-Image Model Optimization

Authors:

Qian Liang↗Xiaomin Li↗Ying Zhang↗Jia Xu↗Lihao Ni↗Hongrui Li↗Jingjing Li↗Jing Lyu↗Chen Li↗

Recent text-to-image generation models have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in synthesizing highly realistic images from text inputs alone. Although existing benchmarks can evaluate the generation capabilities of various models to some extent, they struggle to comprehensively and accurately measure performance across multiple dimensions, often failing to reveal the inherent deficiencies of models in specific categories. To address these limitations, we propose WeGenBench, a novel benchmark designed for the comprehensive, multi-perspective evaluation of text-to-image generation capabilities. Our benchmark comprises a total of 4,000 test prompts across two primary categories, meticulously balanced between Chinese and English to evaluate bilingual and cross-cultural generation capabilities. Beyond macroscopic scene classification, we annotate each prompt with multi-dimensional tags tailored to the distinct content and challenges of each language, thereby refining the generation tasks into more specific sub-categories. Through a cross-dimensional evaluation mechanism leveraging both scene classifications and multi-dimensional tags, WeGenBench can precisely pinpoint model shortcomings in specific generation categories. Furthermore, to measure generation quality more accurately, we design and validate several novel evaluation metrics by integrating Vision-Language Models (VLMs), which assess model performance on domain-specific tasks from three core aspects. Crucially, our approach yields both the assessment outcomes and the detailed reasoning trajectories, facilitating a rigorous verification of the accuracy and soundness of the evaluation results. Finally, we conduct systematic benchmarking on current state-of-the-art methods and provide an in-depth analysis of the limitations present in existing models.

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24.

medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-23 DOI: HASH:e544a2b6d4c2edc0d139fb6f10b4ab91

Sex-Specific TMPRSS2 Response and Reduced Peripheral RNA Concentration Following AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccination in Nigeria.

Authors:

Ekprikpo↗E. S↗Ken-Ezihuo↗S. U↗Echonwere-Uwikor↗B. E↗Jeremiah↗Z. A↗

Background: ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 remains a cornerstone COVID-19 vaccine in sub-Saharan Africa, yet population-specific molecular responses are understudied. We examined peripheral blood ACE2 and TMPRSS2 expression, total RNA concentration, and coagulation indices in Nigerians >=6 months post-vaccination. Methods: In a case-control study in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, 51 ChAdOx1-vaccinated adults and 51 age/sex-matched unvaccinated controls provided venous blood for RNA extraction, qRT-PCR, and coagulation assays. Multivariable linear models assessed effects of vaccination, sex, and age on molecular parameters. Results: Vaccinated participants had 37% lower total RNA concentration than controls (4.02 +/- 0.09 vs 6.38 +/- 0.14 ng/uL, p=6 months post-ChAdOx1, Nigerians show reduced peripheral blood RNA without sustained ACE2/TMPRSS2 upregulation. The sex-specific TMPRSS2 pattern suggests hormone and vaccine interactions previously unreported in African cohorts and highlights the need for sex-disaggregated molecular surveillance. Region-specific reference gene validation is recommended for Nigerian transcriptomic studies.

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25.

arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-25 DOI: arXiv:2603.07221

Margin in Abstract Spaces

Authors:

Yair Ashlagi↗Roi Livni↗Shay Moran↗Tom Waknine↗

arXiv:2603.07221v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Margin-based learning, exemplified by linear and kernel methods, is one of the few classical settings where generalization guarantees are independent of the number of parameters. This makes it a central case study in modern highly over-parameterized learning. We ask what minimal mathematical structure underlies this phenomenon. We begin with a simple margin-based problem in arbitrary metric spaces: concepts are defined by a center point and classify points according to whether their distance lies below $r$ or above $R$. We show that whenever $R>3r$, this class is learnable in any metric space. Thus, sufficiently large margins make learnability rely only on the triangle inequality, without any linear or analytic structure being necessary. Our first main result extends this phenomenon to concepts defined by bounded linear combinations of distance functions, and reveals a sharp threshold: there exists a universal constant such that whenever the margin is larger than this constant, the class is learnable in every metric space, while below it there exist metric spaces where it is not learnable at all. We then ask whether margin-based learnability can always be explained via an embedding into a linear space – that is, reduced to linear classification in some Banach space through a kernel-type construction. We answer this negatively by demonstrating a margin learnable class that cannot be embedded into any Banach space in which linear classification with margins is learnable.

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